Results tagged “nutrition”

The nutritional counselor Jared Koch has a few ideas about what makes for a good, nutritious restaurant meal, but the last thing he wants to do is get preachy about it. He wants you to enjoy your food. Together with food writer Alex Van Buren, he’s written a guidebook called Clean Plates NYC, which eschews numerical grading systems, star systems, and riffs on restaurant design in order to just focus on supper. Rather than cast a myopic eye toward the antioxidizing properties of plums, or romancing the red cabbage, Clean Plates aims to identify some of the more nutritious, decent meals to be had in the city for the vegan, locavore, and meat-eater alike. We spoke with Clean Plates NYC founder Jared Koch yesterday; the book is available in stores now.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is releasing a report today that proposes limiting the amount of fast food joints in the city, giving incentives to encourage healthier markets and mandating city agencies to purchase local produce. Stringer said, “Our foodshed is already broken and we need to fix it,” referring to the big picture of how food is brought, bought, sold, cooked and eaten in the city. Stringer thinks the city should give tax and zoning incentives to bring farmers' markets into areas lacking in healthy food outlets. He also called for schools, shelters and other agencies to be required to buy 20 percent of their vegetables and dairy products from sources within a couple hundred miles of the city. One food consultant said that the plan might be a bit unrealistic to the area's farmland geography telling the Times, “It’s a bigger picture than just apples and carrots.” Nutritional initiatives have been on the rise lately with the health-conscious mayor's calorie display requirements and the governor's talk of raising revenue through a "fat tax."

Now that an appeals court has ruled that the city can start requiring chain restaurants to prominently display their calorie information, Nathan’s has begun tossing up their stats just in time for summer at Coney Island. Kinetic Carnival notes that the Nathan’s basic hot dog has just half the calories packed into a Big Mac from McDonald’s.